These are uncertain times in the world of golf but as the best players in the world – or at least some of them – gather in Ponte Vedra, Florida, this week for the Players Championship this much can guaranteed: there will no mention of the words "fifth major".

Instead the talk at the flagship event of the PGA Tour will about the diminished status of a tournament that once had pretensions to sit alongside the Masters and the Open Championship; about who is not there rather than who is; and finally about what it all means for the future of direction of a sport currently in flux.

Certainly, it would be interesting to hear the views of Lee Westwood, the world No1, on what the future holds for himself and for the sport in Europe and the US. Likewise, Rory McIlroy, who, as no less an authority than Sport Illustrated argued last week, is the currently the most compelling figure in professional golf.

Instead, the Englishman and the Northern Irishman will be elsewhere, resting their weary bones and musing on the madness of the golfing politics that forced (or possibly provoked) them to miss the Players. Under the PGA Tour's rules, non-members are restricted in the number of events they can play in the States. Westwood, a proud member of the European Tour, railed against such restrictions and made a pointed choice. Two weeks ago, he travelled to Jakarta to play in the Indonesian Masters. This week he will stay home in Worksop.

McIlroy, who gave up his PGA Tour membership this year after only one season, was no less pointed, albeit a little more diplomatic than his pal has been. "If I had played in the Players it would be five [tournaments] in a row and that's just too much golf for me,'' he said this week. "I feel as if I just get a little lethargic and a little lazy after three events, and it would just be best for my preparation for the US Open if I didn't play one of those events. Sawgrass was the one – I don't feel that comfortable on the golf course yet. That doesn't mean that I won't play it next year or the year after, but this year it just didn't really fit."

Needless to say it is impossible to imagine either player being so casual about missing one of the four major championships. Barring serious injury or serious personal issues they would be there.

Tim Finchem, the PGA Tour commissioner, has been publicly and, to be fair, privately sanguine about the absence of two of the world's best from his event. The Players Championship will not rise or fall on the presence of Westwood and McIlroy, not in the short term at least. In the long-term, however, there is an easily understood narrative forming.

For one, we can safely declare 2007's expensive "rebranding" of an event staged annually at the tour's TPC Sawgrass venue – new logo, new clubhouse and extensively rebuilt golf course – has failed in its unstated but nevertheless obvious aim of establishing a "fifth" major.

More worryingly for Finchem, the absence of half-a-dozen of the world's top 50 players – the young Japanese star Ryo Ishikawa is another who has chosen not to travel to Florida – is evidence of the changing priorities of golf's new elite. Where once the best players in the world had no greater ambition than to play in the States, where they could most readily enhance their reputation and, more importantly, their bank balance, there is no longer such a pressing need. After all, Westwood has reached world No1 with only a limited number of appearances in the US, as did Martin Kaymer after him.

As for money, the European Tour has no problem with the payment of appearance fees and, if the prize money at its events is lower than what is available on the PGA Tour, there are plenty of tournament organisers willing to pay whatever it takes to tempt the biggest names to their event. In January, Phil Mickelson pocketed a reported $1.3m (£800,000) to play in the Abu Dhabi championship. Likewise, it can be assumed that the talented American Dustin Johnson did not travel to Seoul for last week's Ballantine's Championship because he wanted a closer look at Korean culture.

Money talks in golf, as it always has done. The difference between the past and the present is that weight of money is drifting away from the States. The sport of golf may not be developing in Asia to the extent that its cheerleaders would have us believe but the corporate appetite for using golf to sell its message in places like China is growing exponentially. South America and especially Brazil, which will host to golf's return to the Olympic stage in 2016, will be the next frontier and, after that, India.

It is a brave new world for the modern professional golfer, and a lucrative one. But for Finchem and the PGA Tour, hidebound by its petty restrictions and its narrow North American perspective, it must be a frightening one, too.